Seng Yu Jin

Roy Ng

Teo Eng Seng: We’re Happy. Are You Happy? offers a comprehensive overview of Singapore artist Teo Eng Seng’s bold experimentations over the last seven decades. Teo is known for his invention of what he terms “paperdyesculp”—a malleable mixture of pulp, natural fibres and other commonplace materials, and his technique of finessing it, inspired by Chinese papermaking and calligraphic traditions, and Western abstraction. Through painting, sculpture and paperdyesculp, Teo draws aesthetic vocabularies from an extraordinary range of cultural sources only to deconstruct them, directing the self—spontaneous and raw as he deems—in irreverent jest. Pervasive in his oeuvre is a radical openness to the social world, teasing us to question the human condition with unabashed humour, irony and wit.

We're Happy. Are You Happy?

Teo Eng Seng

Shabbir Hussain Mustafa

In 1981, the Filipino artist and curator Raymundo Albano adopted the expression “Suddenly Turning Visible” to describe the rapid transformation of Manila’s urban landscape. The visibility that Albano evoked was aspirational, driven by a desire for rapid economic growth in which art had a critical role. This catalogue traces this story through three influential art institutions: the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Alpha Gallery in Singapore and the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art in Bangkok. It presents in rich detail artworks from the period, an anthology of primary documents and interviews with curators, artists and architects, revealing the links between architecture, modern art and the role of institutions in Southeast Asia.

Seng Yu Jin

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